Friday, August 10, 2007

Our gastronomic tour of Norway started in Stavanger at Gladmat the 'happy food' festival. The weather wasn't as kind as last year but the food was definitely up to scratch! The scallops were divine (I think this word will get rather over used - everything was of the heavens!) and we particularly enjoyed the dates wrapped in bacon too. A highlight was the 'hummer' (Norwegian for lobster)!

From Stavanger we drove north to Dr Holm's hotel in Geilo....and I can't find the photos from there......where we ate in the brasserie, I remember beautiful tasty food but with remarkably cold vegies, very peculiar.

After a couple of days we travelled up to Dovrefjell and stayed at Kongsvold fjellstue. This fabulous little place was very homely, beautiful simple rooms and amazing food. Mr Nyhus personally attend his guests and we all ate from a set menu each night. The first evening we had muskox terrine with onion compote, pan fried trout with potato mashed with spring onion, asparagus and green beans, followed by pannacotta and raspberry sorbet served on crisp sweet stewed green rhubarb and very old balsamic vinegar.

At breakfast I was a little adventurous and tried some very old crumbly exceedingly salty cheese - euhhhhh! The second evening we had a dish I never order - ox tail soup with maderia in it and to drink, which was magnificent, then halibut with flagelott and green lentils and finally a passionfruit cheesecake. Our wine was a Puilly-fummee sauvignon blanc positively bursting with bananas.

On our final evening we had a speciality of the region almond potatoes which were made into a thick cream soup, then reindeer with celeriac mash, almond potato cake and green greens, followed by chocolate brownie with heavenly blood orange sorbet, my favourite rhubarb again and caramelised pineapple. WOW!!!

We moved further south to the Fossheim hotel, where we had their set menu the first night - an amuse bouche of smoked halibut on turnip puree and with a green olive dressing, salmon roasted in walnut oil with broad beans and a blue mussel cream sauce, deer with mushrooms and wortleberry poached pear, and for dessert a strawberry soup with a raspberry sorbet. This was all exceedingly delicious but sadly the set menu stayed the same for the remaining two nights we were there so one night we had the buffet and the next we had excellent pizza (yes veering off the gastronomic route a little) just over the road.

Our final port of call was the Stalheim hotel, where the first night we were the only ones in the second dining room - complete with magnificent view down the valley as the first dining room was full!!! We all had starters and mains but then nearly exploded as we could have shared probably one between the four of us! I had curried chicken on a pancake to start and then pan fried salmon on spinach and pesto spaghetti for main, fabulous stuff.....but ever so slightly too much!

On our second evening at the Stalheim we had learnt to start small, so I had the steak with 'potato cookies' and roasted vegies and then the chocolate mousse with red fruits. Succulent and creamy! Fantastic food!

Just in case we were peckish between all this amazing food we also managed to squeeze in a few pastries and waffles - my personal favourite were the mandelstangs - must find a recipe!

And now with a couple of weddings to attend in the next month I need to loose a few pounds, kilogrammes, may be I should just leave an arm or leg at home..........